I had lunch today with two friends from the UK (here in Japan on Holiday) who were supposed to have returned to England yesterday but now have to wait until May 4th.... Needless to say they did not wish to extend their vacation this way, as both were to begin new jobs this week.

"As Buddhists, we should aim to develop relationships that are not predominated by grasping and clinging. Our relationships should be characterised by the brahmaviharas of metta (loving kindness), mudita (sympathetic joy), karuna (compassion), and upekkha (equanimity)."~post by Ben, Jul 02, 2009

Uk citizens are currently taking days to return fron Spain and Italy..by car, train and ferry.It would have taken them about 1 1/2 hours to get to Spain or Italy by plane. Many have small children with them.

"…the great earth and the peak of the Himalayas blaze and catch fire. When the great earth and the peak of the Himalayas blaze and catch fire, flames tossed by the winds reach up to the world of Brahma. When the peak of the Himalaya mountain burns, peaks as high as a hundred yojanas, two hundred yojanas, three hundred yojanas, four hundred yojanas ..." [AN, 7.66 The Seven Suns]

PeterB wrote:Blimey they may have a very long and complicated journey home...

They were reissued tickets for a direct flight, May 4th. If they wish to go sooner its gonna be boats, trains, taxis and camel rides...

"As Buddhists, we should aim to develop relationships that are not predominated by grasping and clinging. Our relationships should be characterised by the brahmaviharas of metta (loving kindness), mudita (sympathetic joy), karuna (compassion), and upekkha (equanimity)."~post by Ben, Jul 02, 2009

...Whether a global depression happens this year, next year or in five years time, I'm pretty sure the party's over....Whatever happens, it's going to be a very turbulent decade, and I echo the concerns of the experts that everyone seems to be rather oblivious, or at least overly optimistic that the great human ingenuity will be able to solve all our problems. I hope like hell the optimists are right, but logic seems to suggest otherwise.

mettaJack

I think you're right, Jack. The writing on the wall is gradually becoming clearer: we have been living beyond our means in several ways for perhaps a century and we can't keep doing it. The financial system's reliance on borrowing makes it a Ponzi scheme. It is therefore bound to collapse when it runs out of suckers (i.e. soonish, I think) unless it is pulled into line by regulations quickly enough to give us a soft landing.Peak oil and peak coal are imminent, so our energy and transport sectors will collapse - unless, again, we manage (and that's an active manage, not a 'sit back hoping we're lucky' manage) a soft landing by building capacity in renewables quickly enough.And climate change is already affecting agricultural production and will have increasingly dire impacts (including more and more extreme weather) unless we work really hard to change our polluting ways.(See http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/climate_change/time-to-end-the-multigenerational-ponzi-scheme for more.)Unlike you, though, I'm optimistic about our chances. One of our greatest strengths is our toughness and creativity under pressure. It's likely to be pretty uncomfortable for a lot of us first, though, because we're not very good at recognising a slow-mo crisis until it's right on top of us, and by then it's far more difficult to turn around.Wish us luck!(Better still, keep on raising awareness amongst the head-in-the-sand majority.)Kim

P.S. Here's a reflection from someone who was in Iceland when the volcano blew - http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/21/2878958.htmThe eruption is only a side-issue compared to the broader trends I mentioned above, but the reporter does come to the realisation that our feeling we can control natural forces is delusional.- Kim

PeterB wrote:Tell that to the Kenyan farmers who make their living from exporting their crop Chownah.

Anyway there is a NEW cloud so its apocalypse resumed.

If the rich people in Kenya stopped using all the good farmland to grow food for export then the local people could be totally independent by growing their own food locally. A big problem in the world today is that agrobusiness has tied up too much of the good land in under developed countries forcing agrarian peasants off the land into a "work for us or starve" social situation. My view is that the best thing that could happen for the poor Kenyan is for the big agrobusinesses to go broke and return the land back to the people who could then provide for themselves like thay used to do for hundreds of years. If you want to find out more about this kind of thing do some research on the social effect of the American Fruit Co. when they tied up most of the good farm land in Central America to grow bananas for the breakfast tables of the US.chownah

I rather think the point is not what happened to the produce in warehouses..its the fact that thousands of the poorer Kenyans earned nothing this week.They dont own the produce it is owned by conglomarates.

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Two developments Ben...one is that the wind is set to change and blow it to the Amerikays...the second is that Americans and Canadians probably dont need to worry too much because the aviation authority has decided that the ash doesnt present a problem anyway...doh...

For a moment there, it looked like the UK election would start get interesting with Gordon Brown going into emergeny management mode!kind regards

Ben

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725

PeterB wrote:I rather think the point is not what happened to the produce in warehouses..its the fact that thousands of the poorer Kenyans earned nothing this week.They dont own the produce it is owned by conglomarates.

I agree....it is the plight of the poorer Kenyans which is really the issue here and not whether the vegetable wastes in Europe are being composted and returned to the land......since the poorer Kenyans are probably poorer because they were displaced from their indigenous lands they are not only now without earnings this week but they are also without food...if they lived in a landed community which produced and consumed local organic food then they would probably still have their earnings AND they would have readily available nutritious food at almost no cost except for their own labor......but sadly they are now disposessed from their lands and in a "work for me or starve" situation or should I say that they are now in a "work for me AND starve" situation....chownah